Originally posted by CowinspaceIf you can't Ignore a simple advert then you shouldn't really be on the internet. Those who buy gold/ingame stuff don't normally go through ads they go to ebay or sites like it. As long as mmorpg.com stays free I don't care what they advertise.
Where should they be, in a sandbox or maybe an insane asylum? You make it sound like those who take a principled stand against an ad must be n00bs at life or have a mental defect.
It is not true that most game gold buyers use eBay. Most don't bid on game gold at all, they simply go directly to a website seller who they have used before, and it's usually the same one because they saw and ad for the company on a website like like mmorpg.com, went there and registered, and now it's as simple as a few clicks to buy game gold any time they want, no bidding, no waiting---boom---they can buy that uber sword on a whim.
Originally posted by Antipathy To those people who see gold selling as harmless:
Are you aware that there is currently a major problem where key logggers are being installed using security flaws in IE and then being used to harvest WoW passwords. This flaw is so major that Blizzard have found it necessary to place a warning on their logon screen. One of my guild members - a player who I have partied with several times was recently caught by this scam. His level 60 warrior was stripped of every item and coin he owned, making his character almost useless.
Do you think this would happen if there wasn't a market for gold?
Originally posted by Greslore Keep in mind that there are some MMOs that actually encourage people to buy and sell gold and such online... Like Second Life. (Not my kind of MMO... but that is besides the point)Moreover, it is not mmorpg.com's role to side with what others may seem as "ethical". One person's ethics may not be another's. Be it the majority or minority, or simply the vocal minority's popular opinion. They are here to make money and perhaps take part in something they genuinely enjoy - the world of MMOs.Would I buy gold online? Neh... thats part of the fun of playing IMO. Do I dislike mmorpg.com for advertising entities that sell gold online for games? Not at all. If I were a business, I'd do what I must to keep afloat. It's easy to stay idealistic when nothing is at stake, or when you have sufficient resources to do so.
I doubt that anyone finds the argument: advertising is different than solicitation, a compelling reason to stop complaining about a website running game gold for cash ads. What if cigarette advertising were permitted by law on game websites? That could be done using a piece of your logic and all would be well. My point here is not that cigarettes and game gold are alike, it's that by running game gold ads a website helps to make it seem acceptable, even ethical. The website owner knowingly sides with the game gold campany when this happens, and game gold companies couldn't be happier with it. I don't care whether a website owner states in a forum post that he/she's against game gold selling because it isn't true, obviously, check the side bar ads for the proof.
I will grant you that it's easy to spout off about things when you have nothing material to lose by doing it. This isn't one of those cases, though. Those who object to game gold ads have something to lose, I will call it the quality of their game experience. Do you think that's valuable? I'll bet you do. Gamers pay money for that experience, and they want what they are paying for.
So, if mmorpg players want to complain about a for-profit website selecting to run ads that piss them off, I support their right to do it, even if i don't agree with them. I have also defended mmorpg's right to run game gold ads, in previous posts (this subject comes up again and again), but I have never said it was the right thing to do. It's sleazy when the website owner runs the ad, sleazier when he/she cashes the check from the advertiser. But, we don't get to see that part.
Originally posted by Antipathy I wouldn't be surprised if the net loss of advertising revenue may be as low as 10-20%.
So are you offering to pick up 10-20% of the advertising revenue this site brings in? No, it looks like you think they should spend money on it. It's very easy to be 'principled' about income when you're telling someone else to pay the bill.
I believe that if they care passionately about the longtime health of the hobby then they should take this hit. Afterall, the health of the MMO hobby is closely linked to the long term future of this site.
I don't think the health of the MMO hobby is hurt in the least by gold sellers, and none of the 'ban gold selling' crowd has ever been able to put up a reasonable argument or evidence that it does. All you guys ever do is shout something like 'of course it does, you're just nuts if you don't believe it ruins game economies!', accuse the person asking of being a gold buyer, or some other dodge.
Originally posted by shae As far as I'm concerened as long as this site remains free and I don't have to pay a subscription then I have no place complaining about whatever adds they decide to put up. I may not agree with them all, I down right despise gold selling/buying but these people need to make a living, the better they do, the more the site will improve and as a community member, that's all I care about.
And Shae knocks it out of the park again. Agree 100%.
In War - Victory. In Peace - Vigilance. In Death - Sacrifice.
Originally posted by Roin Originally posted by shae As far as I'm concerened as long as this site remains free and I don't have to pay a subscription then I have no place complaining about whatever adds they decide to put up. I may not agree with them all, I down right despise gold selling/buying but these people need to make a living, the better they do, the more the site will improve and as a community member, that's all I care about.
And Shae knocks it out of the park again. Agree 100%.
Too short sighted IMO.
While the advertising dollars may lead to short term gain for this site, it does to some degree condone RMT's. RMT's are bad for the industry and if they are allowed to perpetuate, they may eventually negatively affect YOUR MMO experience.
So are you offering to pick up 10-20% of the advertising revenue this site brings in? No, it looks like you think they should spend money on it. It's very easy to be 'principled' about income when you're telling someone else to pay the bill.
Of course not and your argument is absurd. Are you suggesting that I have no right to condemn any legal money making activity? That no-one should be ever be asked to behave in a moral fashion? Just because I dislike a preacher calling for Jihad against the west in Yemen, it doesn't mean I feel any desire to pay his wages should he find himself out of a job.
Believe it or not, I make moral choices in my life and expect other people to do the same.
I don't think the health of the MMO hobby is hurt in the least by gold sellers, and none of the 'ban gold selling' crowd has ever been able to put up a reasonable argument or evidence that it does. All you guys ever do is shout something like 'of course it does, you're just nuts if you don't believe it ruins game economies!', accuse the person asking of being a gold buyer, or some other dodge.
Of course no one has been able to put an argument to you about gold sellers harming anyone - because you seem very adept at ignoring any point which disagrees with you view of the world. For example you have ignored the example I gave earlier in this thread about my guildie who has had his WoW character ruined by gold sellers. How would you like that to happen to your favourite character?
Originally posted by lainey I don't like it..but BEFORE i vote...
Will MMORPG get revenue from advertising from online games instead? Where will they get ad revenue?
Ask those companies first, that you'll take down if they are willing to pay for advertising to make up your loss in revenue!
Of course, any sensible company will weigh up the alternatives before making any such decision, but I find the opposite attitude equally absurd.
Some people here seem to believe that if gold advertising stopped then MMORPG.com would disappear overnight. It wouldn't. There may be fewer trips to conventions in far flung places in Korea. Perhaps only a couple of people may get budgeted to visit a US gaming convention instead of four. And perhaps one or two people will have to get slightly less cool jobs working for a bank instead of an MMO website. I could cope with that.
Ok let me get this straight, MMORPG.COm is saying that somehow by selling ad space to companies that they themselves have said are detrimental to MMOGs, that somehow that makes them independant.
/points and laughs
It boggles the mind that they sell the ad space in the first place.
Tho I only bought gold once (A *long* time ago on AO) and don't plan on ever buying again I fully agree with Tenebrion.
As long as no cheating is involved then sell/buy all the gold you can get your hands on. You might be able to buy 3 epic horses while I can't even buy one, but how does that actually really matter to me what you're driving around on? I don't go out of my way to punch anybody who I see driving around in a more expensive car then I do now do I?
Originally posted by Antipathy Of course not and your argument is absurd. Are you suggesting that I have no right to condemn any legal money making activity? That no-one should be ever be asked to behave in a moral fashion?
You haven't established that anything immoral is going on, just that you don't like it, and that you only dislike it enough to ask other people to put their money where your mouth is. It's like the silly poll in this thread; the choice is not really 'gold ads or no gold ads', it's 'gold ads or something to make up the lost revenue', and some of the people willing to click on 'no ads' won't find 'add pop-up ads' or 'cut features X, Y, Z' worth their time either.
Just because I dislike a preacher calling for Jihad against the west in Yemen, it doesn't mean I feel any desire to pay his wages should he find himself out of a job.
Please get a sense of perspective, someone calling for killing people is rather different than running ads for a service you don't like.
Of course no one has been able to put an argument to you about gold sellers harming anyone - because you seem very adept at ignoring any point which disagrees with you view of the world. For example you have ignored the example I gave earlier in this thread about my guildie who has had his WoW character ruined by gold sellers. How would you like that to happen to your favourite character?
Sorry, I wasn't anal retentive enough in what I was saying, I should have known that not being absurdly specific would result in a response like that. I meant no one has been able to put forth an argument about the practice of selling and buying gold for real money actually harming games or gamers, not that everyone who sells or buys gold is a perfect little angel. Most people who have created and/or used viruses, trojans, and other malware are not gold buyers, so the argument that 'some gold sellers did this bad thing that's not related to gold selling' doesn't really hold much water.
Yes I should be able to buy anything with my money. Anything that is made possible or can be made possible and will be made possible. My money should be able to work in all situations and be able to speak for me.
I should be able to buy money printing machines and be able to make money for myself in real life. Too bad in this case the cops would probably come after me
My money should work everywhere, every time and beyond all agreements I might have signed(as long as nobody's there's to supervise the agreements being followed). On a whim my money shall get me all the things I don't have the time to do.
People who play computer games are stupid and deserve to be stepped on by me and my money. If they have time, I should be able to buy the same amount of time with no realistic regard for what it does to games. I mean if it's possible and I can do it and no official from the games industry is telling me to stop, it's completely reasonable. It's just a dimension of games and the games developers CLEARLY intended it to be there. Of course the games developers would remove it if it'd be bad for their products since they have so much money and resources to do so.
I've earned my money. Nobody should tell me what I can and can't do with it.
/end sarcasm
On a side note. As long as this place is getting revenue and functioning well, I couldn't give a rat's ass what they're advertising since I never take ads seriously anyways. If they had alternate ads that would generate as much revenue and not be as controvertial, they should change to those, of course.
So enlighten me, what exactly does buying from the players that farm gold DO to games? That's something that none of the soap-boxers seem to be interested in answering (outside of the vague and timeless "buying gold ruins games!" statements).
Content Writer for RTSGuru.com And overall bitter old man.
Originally posted by Samuraisword need a sticky for this and about 1 month's time for a majority decision
No point. The advertisements were originally put in based on a similar vote on this site.
I for one am not going to start paying to use this place, the adds are fine as far as I am concerned.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
I like ads there like a flu shot. If you can get someone else to deal with them when you don't have to then great.
Well at lest before upgrade whatever that forces stutered video and out of sync audio to play in full screen randomly every 5-15m. Oh and theres a chance on ad hit to crit you with a 50% chance to be afflicted with screen restore lag lasting 1-25s just to switch back to what you where doing before the ad.
Seriously though does anyone besides advertisers like flashing ads on websites? I figure a fair number of people go out of there way to disable flash ads even if they wouldn't mind an unobtrusive ad.
I'm not saying that MMORPG will go down without the ads from those gold sites, but I'm certain that MMORPG spends a lot of time on the site, and they get a lot of traffic, so why not get paid for a silly banner ad?
I don't like people buying gold, but it's up to them lol People can just trek on ebay and buy gold there. If you want your gold, most likely that's the first place you'll look.
I'm just saying that if those gaming companies are COMPLAINING about them...then they should offer to pay for ads themselves instead. If not, keep those banners here.
Originally posted by Babbuun Originally posted by Fadeus
Originally posted by Samuraiswordneed a sticky for this and about 1 month's time for a majority decision
No point. The advertisements were originally put in based on a similar vote on this site. I for one am not going to start paying to use this place, the adds are fine as far as I am concerned.
Bet the original vote was run over by dozens of people who had just "realized" this great site on the internet and who had made 0-1 posts.
Originally posted by lainey I'm not saying that MMORPG will go down without the ads from those gold sites, but I'm certain that MMORPG spends a lot of time on the site, and they get a lot of traffic, so why not get paid for a silly banner ad?I don't like people buying gold, but it's up to them lol People can just trek on ebay and buy gold there. If you want your gold, most likely that's the first place you'll look.I'm just saying that if those gaming companies are COMPLAINING about them...then they should offer to pay for ads themselves instead. If not, keep those banners here.
Hi, Lainey. You raise some good points worth considering.
One thing that rarely gets mentioned in these kinds of threads is something I cannot prove easily because there is no statistical data, no company memorandums, no nothing---yet, you know it's true: game companies want gold sellers mining their games and selling to their subscriber base. The game publishers could do this themselves, and a few do offer game gold for real cash, but it works out better for the publisher when a third party provides this service because they don't have to manage the process or pay employees to do it. All they need to do in order to avoid any moral debate and to protect themselves legally is claim that they are against gold farmers and pretend to cancel some "illegal" accounts now and again. But, the publishers will never actually try to stop gold farmers because it would hurt their business. Millions of players would not subscribe to these games if they couldn't by gold. This is why I can't see the game publishers ever offering to replace lost income (very little, by the way) if mmorpg.com were to stop running game gold ads.
Originally posted by lainey I'm not saying that MMORPG will go down without the ads from those gold sites, but I'm certain that MMORPG spends a lot of time on the site, and they get a lot of traffic, so why not get paid for a silly banner ad?
I don't like people buying gold, but it's up to them lol People can just trek on ebay and buy gold there. If you want your gold, most likely that's the first place you'll look. I'm just saying that if those gaming companies are COMPLAINING about them...then they should offer to pay for ads themselves instead. If not, keep those banners here.
Hi, Lainey. You raise some good points worth considering.
One thing that rarely gets mentioned in these kinds of threads is something I cannot prove easily because there is no statistical data, no company memorandums, no nothing---yet, you know it's true: game companies want gold sellers mining their games and selling to their subscriber base. The game publishers could do this themselves, and a few do offer game gold for real cash, but it works out better for the publisher when a third party provides this service because they don't have to manage the process or pay employees to do it. All they need to do in order to avoid any moral debate and to protect themselves legally is claim that they are against gold farmers and pretend to cancel some "illegal" accounts now and again. But, the publishers will never actually try to stop gold farmers because it would hurt their business. Millions of players would not subscribe to these games if they couldn't by gold. This is why I can't see the game publishers ever offering to replace lost income (very little, by the way) if mmorpg.com were to stop running game gold ads.
Um, pretty much only WOW and Lineage 1/2 can claim millions of subscribers, and niether of those have bad problems with gold sellers. They're there of course, but not an issue.
As to companies WANTING them there, I was onsite on one occaision in AO, some Ahole had set up bots all around Borealis city advertising for a ingame currency site. It took the ARKs and GMs only about ten minutes after the poor fool got set up before they destroyed the bots and whisked his character away, I assume it was for a little "chat" followed by temporary or pernament ban, I dont know, but I do know that that particular character wasnt in the AO player database the next morning.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. Hemingway
I know I feel a little weird that someone easily spent their real $$ to have a ton of gold that would take me...days...weeks to get! Like I mentioned before, I am 100% against buying gold with cash, but that's just my hard core gamer self! Especially since my time is very tight....grinding is very tedious for me.
but it's true that buying gold may keep players in the game.
So then the question is this, which outweighs the other?
The people that the game has kept because they bought gold with their real money, or the people they lost since they got fed up with people buying gold??
Seriously, are you going to quit a game since people buy gold with their real money? Then you better quit all MMORPG's altogether!
And so yeah, I think it's more of a "moral" thing. Money wise I don't think the companies care too much.
So in the end it's up to the people here if they mind MMORPG, sort of endorsing buying gold since they host those ads. So think of this people, they are just banners. You can easily ignore them. Like I mentioned before, if they didn't see those websites when visiting here, they could go to ebay.
Gold trading and leveling services are fine with me.
If a gold trading company can make money buying and selling gold or levelling characters a game company can make even more money doing it.
They don't have to farm or buy the gold/experience they can just invent it out of thin air. If it is profitable, they would be fools not to want to do it themselves. SOE has suggested, this and items as a new funding model for their games on countless occasions.
Isk sellers in Eve, are in direct competitiion with CCP for players money.
As long as there are online games using "time-sinks" (their words) to keep people playing, instead of depending on game quality and enjoyablility, i say go for it, i actually laugh out loud when certain companies like blizzard say they hope we have fun grinding rep, xp or honor, they're living in a GM or Dev world where they just have to type a command to get entire sets of gear for testing.
I'm not saying i'd like the good gear to come easy, but seriously, asking people to farm for months in order to get the good stuff is foolish, a few weeks of constant farming would be much more reasonable.
I was looking around the other day, and to get to pvp rank 14 its going to cost you 3 thousand dollars. thats just insane, the gear isnt even that good compared to other gear people get handed in raids because they kissed the right asses.
Getting PvP rank 14 is the hardest thing you'll ever do in WoW.
Comments
Where should they be, in a sandbox or maybe an insane asylum? You make it sound like those who take a principled stand against an ad must be n00bs at life or have a mental defect.
It is not true that most game gold buyers use eBay. Most don't bid on game gold at all, they simply go directly to a website seller who they have used before, and it's usually the same one because they saw and ad for the company on a website like like mmorpg.com, went there and registered, and now it's as simple as a few clicks to buy game gold any time they want, no bidding, no waiting---boom---they can buy that uber sword on a whim.
I'm not trying to insult you.
I doubt that anyone finds the argument: advertising is different than solicitation, a compelling reason to stop complaining about a website running game gold for cash ads. What if cigarette advertising were permitted by law on game websites? That could be done using a piece of your logic and all would be well. My point here is not that cigarettes and game gold are alike, it's that by running game gold ads a website helps to make it seem acceptable, even ethical. The website owner knowingly sides with the game gold campany when this happens, and game gold companies couldn't be happier with it. I don't care whether a website owner states in a forum post that he/she's against game gold selling because it isn't true, obviously, check the side bar ads for the proof.
I will grant you that it's easy to spout off about things when you have nothing material to lose by doing it. This isn't one of those cases, though. Those who object to game gold ads have something to lose, I will call it the quality of their game experience. Do you think that's valuable? I'll bet you do. Gamers pay money for that experience, and they want what they are paying for.
So, if mmorpg players want to complain about a for-profit website selecting to run ads that piss them off, I support their right to do it, even if i don't agree with them. I have also defended mmorpg's right to run game gold ads, in previous posts (this subject comes up again and again), but I have never said it was the right thing to do. It's sleazy when the website owner runs the ad, sleazier when he/she cashes the check from the advertiser. But, we don't get to see that part.
So are you offering to pick up 10-20% of the advertising revenue this site brings in? No, it looks like you think they should spend money on it. It's very easy to be 'principled' about income when you're telling someone else to pay the bill.
I don't think the health of the MMO hobby is hurt in the least by gold sellers, and none of the 'ban gold selling' crowd has ever been able to put up a reasonable argument or evidence that it does. All you guys ever do is shout something like 'of course it does, you're just nuts if you don't believe it ruins game economies!', accuse the person asking of being a gold buyer, or some other dodge.
Step two: Install Adblock
Step three: there is no step three
In War - Victory.
In Peace - Vigilance.
In Death - Sacrifice.
Too short sighted IMO.
While the advertising dollars may lead to short term gain for this site, it does to some degree condone RMT's. RMT's are bad for the industry and if they are allowed to perpetuate, they may eventually negatively affect YOUR MMO experience.
Will MMORPG get revenue from advertising from online games instead? Where will they get ad revenue?
Ask those companies first, that you'll take down if they are willing to pay for advertising to make up your loss in revenue!
YouTube Page
So are you offering to pick up 10-20% of the advertising revenue this site brings in? No, it looks like you think they should spend money on it. It's very easy to be 'principled' about income when you're telling someone else to pay the bill.
Of course not and your argument is absurd. Are you suggesting that I have no right to condemn any legal money making activity? That no-one should be ever be asked to behave in a moral fashion? Just because I dislike a preacher calling for Jihad against the west in Yemen, it doesn't mean I feel any desire to pay his wages should he find himself out of a job.
Believe it or not, I make moral choices in my life and expect other people to do the same.
I
don't think the health of the MMO hobby is hurt in the least by gold
sellers, and none of the 'ban gold selling' crowd has ever been able to
put up a reasonable argument or evidence that it does. All you guys
ever do is shout something like 'of course it does, you're just nuts if
you don't believe it ruins game economies!', accuse the person asking
of being a gold buyer, or some other dodge.
Of course no one has been able to put an argument to you about gold sellers harming anyone - because you seem very adept at ignoring any point which disagrees with you view of the world. For example you have ignored the example I gave earlier in this thread about my guildie who has had his WoW character ruined by gold sellers. How would you like that to happen to your favourite character?
D&D Home Page - What Class Are You? - Build A Character - D&D Compendium
Some people here seem to believe that if gold advertising stopped then MMORPG.com would disappear overnight. It wouldn't. There may be fewer trips to conventions in far flung places in Korea. Perhaps only a couple of people may get budgeted to visit a US gaming convention instead of four. And perhaps one or two people will have to get slightly less cool jobs working for a bank instead of an MMO website. I could cope with that.
D&D Home Page - What Class Are You? - Build A Character - D&D Compendium
Ok let me get this straight, MMORPG.COm is saying that somehow by selling ad space to companies that they themselves have said are detrimental to MMOGs, that somehow that makes them independant.
/points and laughs
It boggles the mind that they sell the ad space in the first place.
I voted to stop selling ad space to them.
As long as no cheating is involved then sell/buy all the gold you can get your hands on. You might be able to buy 3 epic horses while I can't even buy one, but how does that actually really matter to me what you're driving around on? I don't go out of my way to punch anybody who I see driving around in a more expensive car then I do now do I?
You haven't established that anything immoral is going on, just that you don't like it, and that you only dislike it enough to ask other people to put their money where your mouth is. It's like the silly poll in this thread; the choice is not really 'gold ads or no gold ads', it's 'gold ads or something to make up the lost revenue', and some of the people willing to click on 'no ads' won't find 'add pop-up ads' or 'cut features X, Y, Z' worth their time either.
Please get a sense of perspective, someone calling for killing people is rather different than running ads for a service you don't like.
Sorry, I wasn't anal retentive enough in what I was saying, I should have known that not being absurdly specific would result in a response like that. I meant no one has been able to put forth an argument about the practice of selling and buying gold for real money actually harming games or gamers, not that everyone who sells or buys gold is a perfect little angel. Most people who have created and/or used viruses, trojans, and other malware are not gold buyers, so the argument that 'some gold sellers did this bad thing that's not related to gold selling' doesn't really hold much water.
I should be able to buy money printing machines and be able to make money for myself in real life. Too bad in this case the cops would probably come after me
My money should work everywhere, every time and beyond all agreements I might have signed(as long as nobody's there's to supervise the agreements being followed). On a whim my money shall get me all the things I don't have the time to do.
People who play computer games are stupid and deserve to be stepped on by me and my money. If they have time, I should be able to buy the same amount of time with no realistic regard for what it does to games. I mean if it's possible and I can do it and no official from the games industry is telling me to stop, it's completely reasonable. It's just a dimension of games and the games developers CLEARLY intended it to be there. Of course the games developers would remove it if it'd be bad for their products since they have so much money and resources to do so.
I've earned my money. Nobody should tell me what I can and can't do with it.
/end sarcasm
On a side note. As long as this place is getting revenue and functioning well, I couldn't give a rat's ass what they're advertising since I never take ads seriously anyways. If they had alternate ads that would generate as much revenue and not be as controvertial, they should change to those, of course.
Content Writer for RTSGuru.com
And overall bitter old man.
No point. The advertisements were originally put in based on a similar vote on this site.
I for one am not going to start paying to use this place, the adds are fine as far as I am concerned.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
I like ads there like a flu shot. If you can get someone else to deal with them when you don't have to then great.
Well at lest before upgrade whatever that forces stutered video and out of sync audio to play in full screen randomly every 5-15m. Oh and theres a chance on ad hit to crit you with a 50% chance to be afflicted with screen restore lag lasting 1-25s just to switch back to what you where doing before the ad.
Seriously though does anyone besides advertisers like flashing ads on websites? I figure a fair number of people go out of there way to disable flash ads even if they wouldn't mind an unobtrusive ad.
No point. The advertisements were originally put in based on a similar vote on this site.
I for one am not going to start paying to use this place, the adds are fine as far as I am concerned.
Bet the original vote was run over by dozens of people who had just "realized" this great site on the internet and who had made 0-1 posts.
I don't like people buying gold, but it's up to them lol People can just trek on ebay and buy gold there. If you want your gold, most likely that's the first place you'll look.
I'm just saying that if those gaming companies are COMPLAINING about them...then they should offer to pay for ads themselves instead. If not, keep those banners here.
YouTube Page
No point. The advertisements were originally put in based on a similar vote on this site.
I for one am not going to start paying to use this place, the adds are fine as far as I am concerned.
Bet the original vote was run over by dozens of people who had just "realized" this great site on the internet and who had made 0-1 posts.
Hi, Lainey. You raise some good points worth considering.
One thing that rarely gets mentioned in these kinds of threads is something I cannot prove easily because there is no statistical data, no company memorandums, no nothing---yet, you know it's true: game companies want gold sellers mining their games and selling to their subscriber base. The game publishers could do this themselves, and a few do offer game gold for real cash, but it works out better for the publisher when a third party provides this service because they don't have to manage the process or pay employees to do it. All they need to do in order to avoid any moral debate and to protect themselves legally is claim that they are against gold farmers and pretend to cancel some "illegal" accounts now and again. But, the publishers will never actually try to stop gold farmers because it would hurt their business. Millions of players would not subscribe to these games if they couldn't by gold. This is why I can't see the game publishers ever offering to replace lost income (very little, by the way) if mmorpg.com were to stop running game gold ads.
Hi, Lainey. You raise some good points worth considering.
One thing that rarely gets mentioned in these kinds of threads is something I cannot prove easily because there is no statistical data, no company memorandums, no nothing---yet, you know it's true: game companies want gold sellers mining their games and selling to their subscriber base. The game publishers could do this themselves, and a few do offer game gold for real cash, but it works out better for the publisher when a third party provides this service because they don't have to manage the process or pay employees to do it. All they need to do in order to avoid any moral debate and to protect themselves legally is claim that they are against gold farmers and pretend to cancel some "illegal" accounts now and again. But, the publishers will never actually try to stop gold farmers because it would hurt their business. Millions of players would not subscribe to these games if they couldn't by gold. This is why I can't see the game publishers ever offering to replace lost income (very little, by the way) if mmorpg.com were to stop running game gold ads.
Um, pretty much only WOW and Lineage 1/2 can claim millions of subscribers, and niether of those have bad problems with gold sellers. They're there of course, but not an issue.
As to companies WANTING them there, I was onsite on one occaision in AO, some Ahole had set up bots all around Borealis city advertising for a ingame currency site. It took the ARKs and GMs only about ten minutes after the poor fool got set up before they destroyed the bots and whisked his character away, I assume it was for a little "chat" followed by temporary or pernament ban, I dont know, but I do know that that particular character wasnt in the AO player database the next morning.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Hemingway
the ability to buy gold is a mixed thing.
I know I feel a little weird that someone easily spent their real $$ to have a ton of gold that would take me...days...weeks to get! Like I mentioned before, I am 100% against buying gold with cash, but that's just my hard core gamer self! Especially since my time is very tight....grinding is very tedious for me.
but it's true that buying gold may keep players in the game.
So then the question is this, which outweighs the other?
The people that the game has kept because they bought gold with their real money, or the people they lost since they got fed up with people buying gold??
Seriously, are you going to quit a game since people buy gold with their real money? Then you better quit all MMORPG's altogether!
And so yeah, I think it's more of a "moral" thing. Money wise I don't think the companies care too much.
So in the end it's up to the people here if they mind MMORPG, sort of endorsing buying gold since they host those ads. So think of this people, they are just banners. You can easily ignore them. Like I mentioned before, if they didn't see those websites when visiting here, they could go to ebay.
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The adds are fine with me.
Gold trading and leveling services are fine with me.
If a gold trading company can make money buying and selling gold or levelling characters a game company can make even more money doing it.
They don't have to farm or buy the gold/experience they can just invent it out of thin air. If it is profitable, they would be fools not to want to do it themselves. SOE has suggested, this and items as a new funding model for their games on countless occasions.
Isk sellers in Eve, are in direct competitiion with CCP for players money.
As long as there are online games using "time-sinks" (their words) to keep people playing, instead of depending on game quality and enjoyablility, i say go for it, i actually laugh out loud when certain companies like blizzard say they hope we have fun grinding rep, xp or honor, they're living in a GM or Dev world where they just have to type a command to get entire sets of gear for testing.
I'm not saying i'd like the good gear to come easy, but seriously, asking people to farm for months in order to get the good stuff is foolish, a few weeks of constant farming would be much more reasonable.
I was looking around the other day, and to get to pvp rank 14 its going to cost you 3 thousand dollars.
thats just insane, the gear isnt even that good compared to other gear people get handed in raids because they kissed the right asses.
Getting PvP rank 14 is the hardest thing you'll ever do in WoW.
I call shenanigans!